


Fragmented Souls

by notcool



Series: Show Me Your Darkness (Sanders Sides Fantasy AU) [7]
Category: Cartoon Therapy (Web Series), Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: (like literally two drops but still), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fantasy AU, Gen, Magic, Mild Blood, Mystery, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28349775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcool/pseuds/notcool
Summary: Maybe entering dark, mysteriously-appearing magical towers in the dead of night wasn't the best idea Emile had ever had, but, well, it could hardly be the worst.
Series: Show Me Your Darkness (Sanders Sides Fantasy AU) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980931
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. A Breath of Warmth

**Author's Note:**

> Dear gods I have been stuck in a creative block so bad and I am honestly so glad to get this bit finished even if it's small and technically only half of this installment so yay! Hoping my brain will decide it knows how to words now...

_ “The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.” _

\- Camille Pagila

\-------

Granted, Emile wasn’t known for making good life choices, but even for him this was a new level of dangerous.

In his defense, he hadn't gone  _ looking _ for trouble this time. Trouble had just kind of… appeared. Literally.

In his travels he more often than not spent the nights outdoors, being able to pass for a human rather easily, but still not trusting enough of his abilities to sleep in their villages.

When he had fluttered up to the lower branches of a sturdy dogwood to curl up for the night, he had not been expecting any sort of excitement until sunrise at least. But several hours into the night he found himself awake and blinking up through the leaves, an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach, not enough to tell him what was wrong, but enough to keep his eyes open.

An ancient, earthly presence was thick in the air, stilling the wind and quieting the nightlife to a distant hum. Emile could practically  _ taste _ the magic - laden in dust and spidered with cracks, but far from fragile despite being long forsaken.

It felt  _ alive _ , but… not?

Emile sat up on his branch, blinking owlishly out into the night, searching for the source of the feeling.

He found it when he turned, a great expanse of the forest behind him now lost in the shadow of a looming spindly tower that had not been there when Emile had closed his eyes back in the early darkness.

He stared.

Really, what else was he to do?

After a minute or so he was forced to blink, but the tower remained resolute as before, leaving him with the conclusion that he was definitely not dreaming no matter how ridiculous this seemed.

A dark, mysterious tower had mystically appeared in the dead of night, in an uninhabited forest. By all lines of reasoning, Emile should have turned the other direction right then and left, make sure to keep a wide berth around the area as he continued onward.

But, as previously noted, Emile was not known for making good life choices.

He found himself slinging his pack over his shoulder and sliding to the forest floor, eyes never leaving the tower, entranced by the ancient cold that radiated out from it, deep and earthen and sharp like an unused blade.

Emile only distantly recognized the fact that he was walking now, weaving through the trees towards the impending shadow, not properly taking in his immediate surroundings until he stood at the foot of the tower.

Despite that it had appeared just minutes before, it was overgrown with vines and lanky ferns, twisting up from the ground and curling into the stones like they had been there a hundred years. The tree themselves seemed to have parted to make space for the impromptu structure.

There was a doorway settled above a small set of steps, and Emile could catch the gleam of hinges on one side, but the door itself was absent.

Now that he was closer, Emile couldn’t deny the feeling that the tower was alive, a sentient being that was beckoning him into its depths - but not in a sinister way. No, the feeling it evoked wasn’t fear or caution or even curiosity, but pity.

Pity…

Emile absent rummaged through the pouch at his hip, fingers curling around the grip of his wand.

He tugged it free from its tethers and finally looked away from the tower to concentrate on the pale crystal bound to the tip of the stout little branch.

_ A breath of warmth, a drop of life. _

Emile pressed the pad of his finger to the sharpened tip of the crystal, narrowing his eyes intently as a swell of red slowly spilled across the jagged edges. In one quick, fluid movement he removed his finger and leaned in, blowing a puff of air onto the crystal.

There was a flicker, and a soft hiss as the blood twisted and was sucked inside the stone, and the liquid scarlet was replaced with a pale shine out from the crystal’s center, casting a rosy light out into the darkness around.

Emile brushed off his hand on his tunic and turned back to the freshly illuminated doorway.

He still couldn’t see very far in, but there didn’t appear to be any immediate threats. And so, because who needed self-preservation instincts anyway, Emile made his way up the stairs. 

He paused momentarily in the threshold, frowning as he took note of the way the hinges were bowed, the middle one completely gone and having taken a chunk of stone with it as it was presumably  _ ripped _ out.

Well, that wasn’t encouraging.

Ahead was a short hall that led directly to a spiral staircase, the path ahead quickly winding up and out of sight.

There was a trail of footprints going up, marked by the uneven splatter of something that had dried long ago but looked suspiciously like blood. No trail down, though.

Any reasonable soul would have turned and left and never looked back. Then again, any reasonable soul wouldn’t have even come up to the tower in the first place. Wouldn’t have walked up to its door and peered inside, much so less set foot within.

Emile, however, if it weren’t already established, was not a reasonable soul.

He wasn’t even sure what the feeling was anymore, the gentle tug at his chest that pulled him forward, urged him onward into the shadows, but, against all better judgement, he didn’t resist, simply letting it pull him across the threshold.


	2. A Drop of Life

Souls were, by definition, contradictory.

They were the essence of life, yet the one thing to survive beyond death. Soft yet sharp. Dangerous, yet delicate. 

Souls were an energy, a swirling mess of emotion and desire and perception, difficult to grasp and even harder to keep hold of, a fluid mist that turned to black sand and seeped into the ground upon its beholder’s demise, leaving this plane of reality in search of its next adventure.

Emile had a fair share of knowledge on the subject of souls, having picked up snippets of tales and even a few magical tips off of those he met in his travels.

It had taken awhile to build the confidence to poke at the edges of his own soul, but with a little practice he found he was rather good at such kinds of magics. Of course, there was rarely a reason to use it, but it was interesting knowledge to have, and if nothing else had gained him a very helpful tool - his wand.

The stick itself wasn’t special, simply a stout, sturdy limb he had sanded down and fixed his crystal to the top of. The crystal - that was where the magic happened.

A tiny chip of his own life essence, picked off the edge of his soul as folded up and around itself until it settled into its own, freestanding physical form.

It had taken a good bit of energy, and Emile was rather proud of it. A soul, even a tiny fraction of one, was a powerful amplifier for spells and enchantments. Such as the light spell he was currently performing, letting the crystal take over the burden of the magic to keep the light streaming so he could concentrate on his surroundings.

Emile could have sworn the stairs went on for longer than the tower actually was tall, but there was no way of knowing for sure. He didn’t encounter anyone or anything, his footsteps echoing in the haunting silence, the only thing particularly strange being the blood trail that seemed to lead all the way to the top.

Emile wasn’t sure how he felt about coming across a partially decomposed corpse, but if nothing else, at least a corpse wouldn’t try to attack him… hopefully.

Finally, after what felt like forever, the stairs levelled out into a narrow hallway.

The hall itself wasn’t very long, and was cut off at the end by a stone wall, the only place to go being a doorway on the right.

As he neared the doorway, the deep, earthen sense became practically overwhelming, and Emile just couldn’t shake the feeling that the tower was alive, an ancient presence wrapped around him like a thick smog.

The trail of bloody footprints stopped at the door, but there was no body. Emile tried not to think too hard about what that might mean, instead taking a cautious step through the doorway, wand held out in front of him to light the large room.

The first thing he noticed was the door, which was definitely not where it was supposed to be. It looked like it had been kicked in, lying in two large sections on the flagstones, split down the middle and bowed and cracked in several others.

It appeared someone had been living in this room. No, two someones - two beds, comfortable if a bit crude.

There was a table on the far wall, littered with glass bottles and scraps of parchment. The singular chair that went to it was pulled across the room to a large bookcase. The books that should have been there were in haphazard stacks on the floor in something of a circle, as though someone had been sitting in the middle of the mess.

Another step forward caused a clatter of metal, and Emile nearly jumped out of his skin before his eyes caught the source; a hunting knife, loose on the ground.

Emile was careful to step over it as he made his way to the table, bending a bit to read the labels fixed to some of the bottles there, taking a mental note of how everything was clean of dust, obviously not quite as forsaken as the rest of the tower’s appearance would have one believe.

_ Hemlock extract. V; 17. Horntooth dragon venom. Fermented hex berries. V; 113. Elderberry root. V; 96. _

Even just at a glance, well over half of the bottles appeared to be marked with ‘ _ V; number’ _ \- and, because why not make things weirder, each of those bottles contained what looked suspiciously like blood.

Emile decided he wasn’t in the mood to open one and find out.

Besides, something else had caught his eye; a large jar on the bookshelf across the room that sparkled in the glow of his wand.

Emile stepped over scattered books to reach the shelf, holding up his wand to let the light shine through the thick, curved glass.

Pale yellow glittered back at him, a few larger chunks nestled in a bed of jagged slivers.

_ It’s a soul. _

Emile couldn’t exactly explain how he knew that, but he did, and there was no doubt whatsoever that this was, or…  _ had _ been, a soul.

Feeling a bit light, Emile reached out and ran his fingers over the jar’s lid, screwed on tight and somewhat lopsided. There was a slight tingle under his fingertips, the hushed whispers of something ancient, something powerful, something dangerous…

Emile bit his lip. Whoever’s soul this was, they were still alive, as the crystal hadn't melted away, but something must have gone terribly wrong for it to be all shattered like that. And why would someone just leave their soul in a jar and abandon it?

Emile tucked his wand behind his ear and gently cupped the sides of the jar in his hands, leaning until his nose was nearly touching the glass.

“Who are you?” He murmured. “Why are you here?”

He could very well have imagined it, but Emile could have sworn that, just for a moment, the crystal shards took on a little glow of their own.

There was a low groaning sound, and Emile stiffened as the floor shifted under him, stones scraping angrily and wooden supports creaking.

Emile swallowed, setting his jaw and straightening back up, taking the jar off its shelf. 

“Come on,” he told the broken crystal, flipping his shoulder bag open and rearranging his spare clothes to make space for the jar. “A soul shouldn’t be left just lying around. Anyone could just walk in here.” He tucked his extra tunic around the jar, securing it in place. “This doesn’t seem like a good place for you. Why don’t we see if I can manage to come across your body, hm?”

This time, he was sure he hadn't imagined it - the crystal glowed. Just a pale spark, a flicker of life from dead coals, but the wave that washed over him told Emile the fragmented power was not hostile.

No, it was hopeful. Grateful, even, if perhaps a little disoriented.

The floor moved again, and Emile stumbled, barely catching himself on the bookshelf.

The jar glowed for a third time, almost urgent.

“Yeah,” Emile carefully refastened the bag, weary eyes going over the messy room. He could almost feel the residual fear of the room’s last resident, labored breaths and erratic heart as they scrambled to leave. “Let’s get out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the process of moving so this took a little longer than it was supposed to to finish but hey it exists now at least


End file.
